Chapter XI Hide and Seek
For a second Lawrence was silent, as a thought flashed through his brain as to the pathetic plight of the girl. The next instant he bent forward across the table, his clear gray eyes fixed upon hers, and holding her wavering gaze.
“I want to tell you a little story, Miss Rives,” he said, in a hurried, almost jerky, tone, “and then I want you to do me a favor. Wait, please! Don’t say you won’t until you’ve heard me. This morning I left a miserable hall bedroom over on the West Side to walk the streets, because I could not face the woman I owed three weeks’ rent.”
She caught her breath quickly, and, as her eyes flashed to the wonderful emerald ring on his finger and back again to the pearls gleaming in his immaculate shirt, an expression of bewildered incredulity came into her face.
“I know,” Barry went on hastily; “it seems impossible, but it’s true. I’d had little to eat for days. My last nickel went for a cup of coffee. I had only a single penny left. I was cold and hungry and desperate. I had been out of a job for months, and there wasn’t the slightest prospect of getting one. You see, there’s scarcely a person in New York who could understand as I do what you have been through—and what may be before you now.”
He paused an instant, but she made no comment. Her eyes were fixed intently on him as if his story held her entranced.
“For hours I walked the streets, then took refuge in a railway station to keep from freezing,” Lawrence continued presently. “And there, when everything was blackest, when it seemed as if not a single hope remained, the wheel of fortune turned. From the lowest depths I was hoisted in a moment to a height I had come to believe impossible.”
A faint, puzzled line had come into her low forehead. For a moment she waited, expecting him to continue. When he did not, she raised her eyebrows a trifle.
“But how——” she began.
“I can’t tell you,” he put in swiftly. “I’ve promised to keep silent. I can only say that I was given a very large sum of money to carry out certain conditions, and that those conditions carry with them no loss of self-respect. What I want you to do is to take a little—just a little—of this money to tide you over this period of hard luck.”
A sudden color flamed into her face, and her lips parted. Before she could utter a word Barry went on pleadingly:
“Please don’t say no, Miss Rives. The situation is desperate. If this girl friend of yours has moved, what will you do? Even if she is still there, I don’t suppose you would keep on accepting hospitality from one who probably couldn’t afford it. I can, you see, and if you’ll only look upon me as Phil’s friend, acting in his place, I’m sure you won’t refuse.”
For a long minute the girl sat staring into his frank, kindly face with eyes which seemed to plumb his very soul. Perhaps it was what she saw there that made her give in; perhaps it was the thoughts which flashed through her mind of the awful streets, wind-swept and dark and bitter cold, with even more poignant terrors lurking in the shadows. At all events, she sighed faintly, and reached for her gloves.
“Very well, Mr. Lawrence,” she said quietly. “You may lend me—ten dollars.”
“But that isn’t——”
“It is quite enough,” she put in decidedly, “to make me grateful to you as long as I live. Would you mind—if we go now? It’s getting late.”
Without further protest, Barry paid the bill at once, and helped her on with her coat. As they reached the street he handed her a ten-dollar bill, which she slipped into her worn glove with another brief word of thanks.
The ride uptown was a rather silent one. Barry did most of the talking, for he felt that the girl would rather say little.
At Forty-eighth Street they got out, and, turning westward, walked briskly through the chilly street. As they approached a certain shabby-looking house midway in a block, Miss Rives, glancing upward, gave an exclamation of satisfaction at the sight of a light in the front room on the top floor.
“I’m sure Sally’s still there,” she said, turning to Lawrence. “She used to sit up reading till all hours.” She hesitated an instant, and then went on more slowly: “I think I’d better go to the door alone. The woman who keeps the house is very kind, and, even if Sally’s gone, she’ll take me in. Good-by, Mr. Lawrence, and—thank you—a thousand times, for what you have done. Will you—give me your address so that I can send back the money—when I have it?”
Barry’s fingers closed firmly over the hand she held out.
“I’m at the St. Albans just now,” he returned. “But I probably won’t stay there long. Wouldn’t it be better if I looked you up to see how you’re getting on?”
For a bare second Shirley Rives hesitated. Then she turned away, and began mounting the steps.
“I should be very glad to see you again, Mr. Lawrence,” she answered. “Good night!”
From a little distance Barry watched her ring the bell, saw the door open with almost no delay at all, and heard a brief murmur of conversation. When the girl finally stepped into the house and the door closed, he turned away with a sigh of satisfaction, and started back toward Broadway.
He had not gone more than a few steps when he saw approaching the lights of a rapidly moving carriage, and a moment later a well-appointed private brougham passed him, the iron-shod hoofs of the spirited horses striking sparks from the icy street. A vague, languid curiosity stirred him as to what a conveyance of that sort was doing there at that hour, but it swiftly vanished in the interest of another discovery.
Reaching the corner of Eighth Avenue, he happened to glance swiftly to his right, and noticed a man standing silently in the corner of a darkened doorway. There was nothing very extraordinary in this, save for the fact that it was a night which offered no temptations for loitering in the street; but there was something about the powerful, square-shouldered figure, accentuated by the heavy ulster which enveloped it, that struck Lawrence as oddly familiar. The coat collar was turned up and buttoned close; the brim of the soft felt hat was pulled well down, so as to conceal the face, but in spite of that a bit of grizzled beard was visible, which stimulated Barry’s memory.
In that momentary hesitation on the curb he remembered that just such a man had been standing in another doorway near the restaurant as they left it less than an hour before, and he wondered at the curious coincidence which should bring about this second meeting.
Before he reached Broadway Lawrence began to have doubts as to whether it really was a coincidence or not. Another man would have thought nothing of the matter; but Barry had lately been through an experience of shadowing which taught him many things about the methods of private detectives and others of their ilk, which had produced in him a habit of being constantly on guard.
At least it would do no harm to be sure, he thought, and, rounding the corner of Broadway, he hastened forward a few steps to the entrance of a moving-picture theater. Once within its shelter, he swiftly found a spot where the plate-glass windows of the ticket booth acted as an admirable reflector. Then, back squarely to the street, and eyes riveted on the improvised mirror, he leisurely undid his fur coat, as leisurely produced a cigarette from his case, and hunted for his match box.
It was just as he struck a light that his patience was rewarded. In the glass he saw the stranger steal silently into view around the corner, hesitate for the fraction of a second, then, catching sight of Barry’s back, as softly withdrew out of sight.
“So that’s your little game, is it?” Lawrence reflected, with a grim smile, as he lighted the cigarette with care, and flicked the match into the street. “Looks as if there might be a bit of fun in this.”
Buttoning his coat, he started briskly down Longacre Square, swinging his stick with the air of a man who was just beginning a constitutional. In front of the Astor he paused a second, as if half minded to enter the brilliant hostelry. Then, without warning, he turned abruptly, stepped into the street, and headed for the Times Building. As he did so he caught a glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of his pursuer, half a block in the rear.
With a chuckle of amusement, Barry passed the outdoor subway entrance, and walked swiftly into the lower floor of the building. The instant he was inside, he hastened his steps, hurried past the stairs leading down into the underground road, pushed his way through the throng which crowded the big drug store that occupied the ground floor, and emerged on Forty-second Street.
A crosstown car was just getting up speed as he dashed across the street; and with some difficulty he raced forward and swung himself aboard. A backward glance showed that his bearded friend was nowhere in sight, and Lawrence smiled again.
Nevertheless, he did not relax his vigilance. Making his way through to the front of the car, he sat down on one of the little seats just behind the motorman, and made no attempt to alight until Madison Avenue had been reached. Here he slipped off, dodged around the front of the car, slid across the slippery pavement, and was engulfed in the comparative shadow of the Manhattan in an instant.
The three blocks to Forty-fifth were passed in as many minutes. Around the corner of the cross street, however, he sought a secluded doorway, and waited patiently for as much as five minutes, with the pleasant, ever-growing conviction that his man had been eluded.
“Not quite clever enough, my friend,” he murmured, as he crossed the dark and rather silent street, heading for the bright entrance of the St. Albans near Fifth Avenue.
Part way down the block stood a pair of old-fashioned brownstone houses, and, as he passed the shadowy bulk of the first high stoop, Barry chuckled again.
“Not quite clever enough,” he repeated amusedly. “You’ll have to get up a trifle early to——”
Crash! From behind, something struck his head with a crushing force that sent him to his knees, stick flying one way, top hat the other.
With a hoarse cry of anger, he strove dazedly to turn and grapple with the unknown assailant. Before he could do so the heavy weapon descended for the second time. There was a shower of stars, a sickening sense of faintness, and, with a groan, Lawrence toppled forward on his face, to lie still and silent on the icy pavement.